Bullied by Family Members over the Way You Dress?

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My mom wishes I would dress more "trendy". My mother is 58 years old and wears more stylish clothes than I do. I always wear knit pants or loose leggings and men's T-shirts. The only shoes I ever wear are sneakers. My mom says I look "frumpy" and "dowdy" but I try not to let it get to me. The only time I was ever really offended was when she said I looked like a homeless person. She also wishes I would wear makeup more often (I find that most makeup seems to bother my skin) and do my hair, but I just usually let it hang loose or put it in a low ponytail if I want it out of the way.

the next time my dad tells me to change my clothes one more time i will tell him "if you want to go play dress up, go get yourself some dolls".

he and my mother have always been on my case about my clothes choices for stupid and petty reasons, but my dad is a controlling kind of person in general. i think that as i grow and get more independence, my clothes are the among last things he believes he has control over regarding me. while he's wrong, i understand him.

they bring up the nonsense that i have "no friends" because i wear the same clothes every day. they are the only ones that care; all the others that do bring it up are indifferent (as they should be). i don't know if people, when and where they were a kid cared about the way others dress, but they sure as heck don't now.

my mother has two closets and a chair full of clothes that i have never seen her choose from. unless she has emotional attachment to all of them, which i doubt, it would to a lot of good to just throw the lot away or give them away. we need space.

Whenever I go somewhere where I will be seen I try to dress as cute as I can. I like skinny jeans because I can wear UGG boots with them. I love dresses and got one for Christmas. Makeup makes me happy too.

That's terrible. My own family doesn't seem to mind the way I dress at all, which is mainly jeans, t-shirts, preferably with cartoon characters on them, and sneakers. When I was a teen my mom would try to get me to wear more "feminine" clothes, which nearly always failed. That was long before my diagnoses.

It's not like I dress like a slob or anything, and jeans and t-shirts can be very stylish.

I wouldn't say that I was bullied exactly over my clothing and makeup preferences by my family but there was some strong encouragement to wear more feminine things and start putting on makeup. I can echo what another poster said about family believing that it would help them to fit in since my father has always been extremely concerned about me not being very social and not having many friends.

However, I think part of his motivation may have been pure sexism. He doesn't understand the concept of gender being a social construct as well as a spectrum (which is what I believe) and insists that your gender identity is determined by your anatomy. He's very much attached to the idea that women are supposed to enjoy things like dresses, skirts, high heels and makeup. Since I refuse to wear any of those things, he doesn't think that I respect myself or like anything about my appearance. That's not me being hyperbolic - he's actually said them out loud to me.

I know that it can be very tiresome when someone is regularly hounding or hassling you about something but I agree with the other posters here that setting some boundaries and enforcing them if violated is a good idea.

Why do you think they are giving you such a hard time to accept you for who you are?
Are you trying to give them (particularly your NT sisters) a hard time in return?

If they can't accept you for who you are, then why? What's the point?

And another thing, most of my friends have little contact with their siblings, so this might even be seen as normal (this doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with autism btw), but perhaps they want you to "fit in", but you are different and probably find other things important.

My advice: Go after your own needs and do the things that make you happy, you're the most important person in your life, never forget that

Not my family but by my ex in-laws and my ex. One particularly awful incident culminated in me running out of my ex in-law's house in tears, in the middle of dinner. I was wearing a comfortable stretch lace headband, which I thought looked nice as well as being practical; they told me to take it off because it looked 'stupid' and 'frumpy' and kept laughing at me. I already found family dinners to be stressful enough as it is so it just got too much and I ran out. They also successfully bullied me into getting my ears pierced, after which I felt ill and upset for days, and tried to get me to perm my hair, which I refused to do.

One Christmas Eve, I got revenge ..... (mwua ha ha ha ha ha ha!)

You see, the year before,
Grandma was not too appreciative that I was wearing jeans to Christmas dinner.
So the very next year .....
I went out and bought a red Christmas table cloth of Scotch tartan.
First I made a Halloween costume out of it ...
a nice, Scottish kilt.
I cut some of it off to make a sash.
I wore a nice white shirt, a tam (Scottish hat),
and a shield attached to a belt around my waist.
I held it all together with pins.
And I also wore black leather boots.

Grandma saw me on Christmas Eve and her eyes lit up with happiness!
"Oh come here and let me hug you, you look Beautiful ! !!"

I went over, hugged Grandma, and sweetly replied:
"Why thank you ... I'm wearing a table cloth!"

...

I think it's really complicated. With my sisters, I wouldn't be surprised if it was to do with jealousy. I'm the only one who is/has attended a four-year education institution, will be the first to get a Master's in something that isn't teaching, and the first in living memory, at the very least, to earn a Ph.D., should I choose to do that. With my dad, I think it's because he believes women should look and dress a certain way, which means long, styled hair, makeup, form-fitting shirts, nice shoes, and flattering skirts/tight pants. My parents' love largely seems conditional (although they never verbalize it). I give my youngest sister a hard time for her inability to divide by 10 and her hatred of the word "moist" due to her love of reading bad erotic fanfiction, but other than that, I don't really give either of them a hard time.

I've given up on pleasing them. I've finally decided it's not worth the stress to deal with them. My mom found out what I was giving her for Christmas and threw a fit because I *gasp* didn't get her the right brand of what I got her. Because I'm the only one who thinks it's wrong, I haven't been by to give my sisters their gifts and they don't seem to want to have anything to do with me. The stress actually caused me to have another outbreak of shingles (my third since I was 21) the week of finals.

I don't think they understand at all. They have so many other passions like sports and (in the case of the older of my sisters) binge drinking, and I'm pretty much focused on only a couple things, like reading 50+ books a year, catching up on academic papers, and studying to get the highest possible GPA I can. They don't get why I watch cartoons in Spanish to brush up on my Spanish vocab and pronunciation or why it takes me so long to finish books (the answer being, of course, studying and doing readings for my classes).

I would tell them you are not changing the way you dress and that you don't want to hear anymore about it.

I tried that and they told me I had too little personality to pull off the whole pariah thing. They don't shut up about it, no matter how hard I try.

Ummm...yeah. That is *exactly* what my "parents" told me.

"You need us. You won't last a day without us. You will come crawling back, but if you leave now, and turn your back on faaaaàaaaaaaaaaaaaamily, you are never coming back."

Been a couple of years now, and they are still waiting for me to "come back". They can wait until the end of Time, because when I am done, I AM done.

You know why they treat you the way they do ? Its because they have NO respect for you. If you love yourself at all, enough already. Cut them off and move on.

Last edited by HisMom on 12 Feb 2016, 9:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I am in agreement with you. My parents have zero respect for me as a human being, they never will, and I should move on. I have cut them off, and oddly enough feel no remorse or attachment to them like I have the other times I've tried to cut them off.

Yep. If you had a crappy childhood, and your so-called "parents" made it their business to beat you down and keep you there, you grow up thinking that YOU deserve the abuse and the disrespect. Every time you try to stand up for yourself, and assert your independence, they will continue beating you down. It's really not about you, it's about THEM, and their mental illnesses / personality disorders / emotional disturbances / whatever. It's the same story -- the characters may change, the names certainly change, the backgrounds could change, but there's a common thread in every single one of these vicious stories and that is that these so-called "parents" have ZERO respect, leave alone affection or unconditional love, for their offspring. It messes with your head, and it leaves you feeling undeserving of love or happiness.

When I first cut them off, I was raw with pain for the first several weeks. I waited for indications that they would admit to wrong-doing, reach out to me, try to make amends and you know what ? NOTHING happened. They wanted ME to reach out to THEM and apologize for daring to confront them for YEARS of vicious abuse and chronic maltreatment. Can you believe their gall ?

But out of sight truly is out of mind. As the weeks passed and turned into months, I actually "missed" them less and less and less. Not having to make those weekly phone calls and be put through the wringer about my parenting, my housekeeping, my (in) ability to deal with my son's special needs, led me to realize just how much of a sheer glutton for punishment I had been. Eventually, on the first anniversary of the great cut-off, I got drunk, called my Mum and told her how happy I was to have FINALLY kicked her out of my life. I also said a lot of other things under the influence that I would not have DARED to otherwise voice, but alcohol gives you a certain courage to stand up to those who have bullied you for your whole life, ruined your childhood, attempted to ruin your life as an adult ... and with a brashness fueled by drink, I let 'er rip.

Poor Mum. That was the last time I spoke to her... and it led to me being cut off EN MASSE by the rest of the faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamily. Ask me if I give a ****... HICK !

The second anniversary of the great cut off approaches. And you know what ? I hardly even think of her anymore. I know that she's out there, complaining about me to anyone who will care to listen, and I *actually* feel sorry for her. I am sorry that *she* had had a crappy childhood herself, I am so sorry that she married an a**hole, I am extremely and profoundly sorry that she had a mental illness... I am sorry for her whole entire life, but that's the extent of my "caring". I am free and there's no freaking way I am going to let her (or her Sperm donor, my "Dad") back into my life. I like being my own person and being able to live my life, parent my kids and do what I will without having to worry about what "they" will say. Oh, and not having to pay $$$$ on international phone call costs (only to be yelled at, and criticized / verbally abused) sweetens the pie.

You'll get there, too. You'll learn that there is no need for remorse for cutting off those who don't respect, appreciate or love you. You're already realizing that you owe your loyalty and love to yourself, not to your "parents". You will soon get to a point where you love your new-found freedom so much that you will never ever ever go back. You're an adult woman now, not a little girl, anymore. You don't need Mummy's or Daddy's permission anymore to live / breathe / think / act. Do as *you* will, and to thine own self be true.

Congratulations and (((Hugs))).

So far the worst part of the departure has been getting my third bout of shingles and finding out that my mom complained about my cut off to a friend of mine, who happens to groom my dog and two of my parents' dogs, and asked her to tell me to forget and forgive. It doesn't work that way anymore. I'm tired of being the third wheel to their perfect family, of feeling like crap all the time and feeling like I have to censor myself or be on with them. For my health to say the very least, I can no longer do it.

I have huge problems with that. I tend to go through phases with my clothing, and they love to pester me about that, too. They especially hate that I'm a girl who always wears boy clothes.